All About Eggs

Photo from weheartit.com

Conventional wisdom holds that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, since it jump-starts the metabolism that powers you through the rest of the daily efforts. Today’s article will turns its focus to the breakfast-staple-turned-treasure-prize-of-Easter: the egg. With Easter on its way, Torontonians alike can look forward to celebrations of the Resurrection and a coinciding equinox of the seasons, not to mention the hope of the end of the winter spells. Whether one celebrates the Easter Holiday or not, this article hopes to provide the hard-cracking facts of its soft-shelled subject.

In the kitchen, the egg’s ergonomic shape offers both practicality and quaintness to cooking. There is familiarity with the egg, the oval shape that conforms to a human palm, with a slight teardrop crown to cleave and pull apart the shell provides for cracking with élan. Its flavours are simple, and yet the possibilities sprawl outward on how it can be prepared. For those looking to perfect their single-handed egg-cracking techniques, I have included an Easter treat for you. A practice video that will run you through the basics of single-handed egg-cracking, and pro-tips to avoid spending a fortune on practice eggs. Visit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfHqdc4pbbs

For the modern kitchen-devotee, I would recommend a different type of egg this Easter: Heritage eggs. Starting with the colour of these eggs, there is much to be surprised by with these everyday fridge fixtures. Some are a very modern blue and slate-gray mix (a colour I’ve often considered painting my living room). Other can be a speckled shale-brown, and of course, the classic eggshell-white. I spoke with Murray Thunberg, a farmer of heritage chickens and heritage pigs, about the variety of colours of these eggs. He states that: “Heritage breeds of chickens have such varying degrees of shaded egg shells. I find the old world breed brown layers interesting as you get a wide spectrum from tan, pink, plum and a dark chocolate colour. I think there must be subtle differences in some of the earlier developed breeds of chickens that originated from different parts of the world.”

Heritage Chicken eggs have some nifty nutritional qualities that regular chicken eggs don’t carry. Inside the gentle shell of a single egg from a heritage chicken lies 2-3 times the nutritional content than commodity (read: supermarket) eggs, including twice the amount of omega-3 fatty acids and three times more vitamin E. Like many Torontonians, vitamin D is incredible important to us due to our exposure to direct sunlight being limited throughout the bulk of the year. Inside the eggs of heritage chickens, one can consume three to six times as much vitamin D as typical supermarket eggs. This means two of these eggs cooked in any way can benefit you with 63 to 126 percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin D. All egg whites contain an array of albumin proteins. These proteins proved energy in the human blood stream. The albumin protein specific to eggs is called ovalbumin, and it is the most prominent one directly related to human health.

All this dense nutritional content can be yours without breaking the bank. Murray Thunberg’s Heritage Chicken eggs are sold at about 25 stores across Ontario, including The Healthy Butcher, Butchers of Distinction, Mcewans, Pusateris, Summerhill Market, Cheese Boutique and lots more. His eggs are also used in the kitchens of Cafe Fiorentina, Hogtown Cure, Globe Bistro, and Belong Cafe at Brickworks. Take the new, on-coming warm season to go out and explore these food offerings of health and heartiness across the city. Stay hungry, Toronto, and a joyous seasonal equinox to all.